The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and method, a recording medium, a program, and a wireless communication system and, more particularly, to an information processing apparatus and method, a recording medium, a program, and a wireless communication system that are suitably applicable to user authentication.
Recently, services are in wide use in which user authentication is executed by use of a wired or wireless communication system to provide various kinds of information and commercial products to authenticated users (or authorized users). For the user authentication, a method is known in which a distance between a receiver apparatus and a user-operated terminal apparatus from which signals are transmitted to the receiver apparatus is measured.
It is known that RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is used for the method of authentication based on the distance between a receiver apparatus and a terminal apparatus. In this RFID-based method, user authentication is executed by getting an RFID (or an RF tag) in which personal information such as user ID (Identification) is stored. The REID is wirelessly communicated being closed to the reader of each receiver apparatus. In this case, user authentication is executed on the basis of the user ID received from the RF tag and the distance between the RF tag and the reader. Some RFID-based wireless communication systems generate a power necessary for operation by the principle of electromagnetic coupling, thereby eliminating the necessity for incorporating a power supply in the RF tag.
Also, a method of identifying user's current position on the basis of GPS (Global Positioning System) is currently available (for example, refer to patent document 1 below) . In the GPS-based method, a mobile phone receives a GPS signal from a GPS satellite and computes the current position of the mobile phone and the current time on the basis of the received GPS signal. Then, the mobile phone transmits the computed current position and current time to a server (or a receiver apparatus) in wireless communication.
Methods of authentication on the basis of user position include a method in which user authentication is executed on the basis of user's current position identified by GPS.
In addition, a method is available in which a time between the transmission of a radio signal (hereafter referred to as a transmission signal) to a user's terminal apparatus by an authenticating apparatus (hereafter referred to as a receiver apparatus) and the reception of a radio signal (hereafter referred to as a response signal) from the user's terminal in response to the transmission signal is counted to compute the distance between the terminal apparatus and the receiver apparatus, thereby executing user authentication on the basis of the obtained distance.
In the above-mentioned authentication method, the receiver apparatus transmits a transmission signal to the terminal apparatus and the terminal apparatus receives the transmission signal from the receiver apparatus. Next, the terminal apparatus generates a response signal in accordance with the received transmission signal and transmits the generated response signal to the receiver apparatus. Receiving the response signal from the terminal apparatus, the receiver apparatus transmits the transmission signal to the terminal apparatus and counts a time from the transmission of the transmission signal to the terminal apparatus to the reception of the response signal from the terminal apparatus, thereby computing a distance between the terminal apparatus and the receiver apparatus on the basis of the obtained time.
[Patent document 1]
Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2004-32376